While Microsoft and its partners haven’t exactly announced a ton of Xbox games for Windows Phone 8 so far, the same can’t be said for Gameloft. Back in October, the mobile game publishing giant announced a whopping 12 games specifically for Windows Phone 8. These titles rely on the new mobile handsets’ extra horsepower and most would be impossible to port accurately on our beloved Windows Phone 7.

It’s been a long wait, but the first Gameloft Windows Phone 8 game is finally here: Asphalt 7, the arcade-style racing game. That’s right, a non-Angry Birds Windows Phone 8 game! Who’d have dared to imagine such a thing? In case that didn’t knock you right out of your office chair, it even has…. Real-time online multiplayer! I don’t mean asynchronous: this is the for-real deal. Ho-lee crap, I just had to fetch my socks from across the room. And did I mention Asphalt 7 is priced to sell?

Head past the break for details! We'll have a video soon too.

Who needs 6?

Asphalt 5 was a functional but poorly balanced racer on Windows Phone 7. For Microsoft’s new mobile OS, Gameloft has wisely decided to skip part 6 and jump straight to the latest series entry, Asphalt 7: Heat. It is once again a fast-paced, easy to play racing game that doesn’t get bogged down with too many simulation aspects.

Asphalt 7 features the most detailed 3D graphics in an Xbox Windows Phone game to date with stunning cityscapes, beautiful colors, and lighting effects that rival a JJ Abrams movie (I kid). Just like its predecessor, the cars are fully licensed and rendered in lavish detail. Some of the more desirable makes include Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and even the DeLorean.

As a result of the complex graphic engine and the game’s wealth of content, it clocks in at a whopping 878 Megabytes. And it requires 1GB of RAM, so devices with only 512 MB such as the HTC 8S, the Lumia 620, and the recently announced Lumia 520/521 will not be able to run the game. That’s a drag, but graphically intensive games would struggle with the tiny 150 MB of RAM that is allotted on those low-memory devices.

Multiplayer, what!

It looks like the increased level of hardware access in Windows Phone 8 finally allows the inclusion of real-time multiplayer (Pool Pro Online apparently only simulated it). Since the game just came out and takes a fair bit of time to download, we haven’t been able to test its multiplayer in action yet. But it does appear to operate with Gameloft’s own servers as opposed to Microsoft’s servers, so users will need to create their own Gameloft accounts to hop online. That’s actually very encouraging since the multiplayer features in games like Carcassonne have been terrible on the whole.

Check out that sticker price

The arrival of a hot game like Asphalt 7 (complete with online multiplayer) is wonderful news for Windows Phone 8. It looks like Gameloft (possibly with Microsoft’s input?) is serious about making sure Asphalt 7 sells, too. It costs only 99 cents, just like the iOS version. There are optional PDLC micro-transactions, but they aren't needed to simply enjoy the game. If you’ve got a Windows Phone 8 device with enough RAM and storage space to run it, you might as well skip the test drive and give this one a buy.

Get Asphalt 7: Heathere at the Windows Phone Store. As usual, the link may take awhile to show up in your Store. Just try again later.

It's 8 months old and came out on BB10 just the other day. That's right, a brand new OS got it before one that's more established. More to the point though is that we're supposed to be celebrating the low price and that it has online multi-player, things that have been par for the course on Android and iOS. If this trend continues and WP8 is on parity with apps and features then that's great for us but it's been over 2 years for us to get to this point.
MS have made it easier for devs to port their apps over by why is that not happening? Apps are announced for iOS and Android all of the time whereas WP users are left wanting and waiting. Adobe (a key MS partner) just released Photoshop Touch for iOS and Android, will we ever see that? How about games such as The Room, Year Walk or SpaceTeam? Tomorrow iOS and Android users will get Real Racing 3 but no mention of that for WP8. MS announced a bunch of games and apps last year, yet 4 going on 5 months into WP8, those apps and games still aren't here. I'm tired of playing the waiting game when all I really want to play is Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

I was a release day of adoptor of WP7, and could not take the lack of apps. I went back to iphone only to be bored to death of the (in my opinion of course) tired user interface. What we have now IS improvement from then. Micrsoft has shown they will stick to their guns here. I like to compare this to their venture into home gaming.

Wtih an xbox, win phone, and windows 8. I have a user experience that can not be seen anywhere else. The holy grail of intergrated entertainment. I for one will see these belated releases as a sign of life, and better than nothing at all.

Is anyone else having issues downloading this title? When I click 'Buy' it says that I do not have enough storage on my device and that I should free up some space. The game says it's 887MB and I have over 2GB's free. I tried rebboting and still the same message.

From my experience you need at least thrice the free space of the app you want to install. First to cache the download, then for the installer to uncompress. While the download is 878MB, I am sure the game data uncompressed takes roughly 1GB+.

However, the system sometimes manages to clean the oldest cache data, when it's low on disk space, and a new game is being installed. Although it is pretty scary, when the phone becomes almost non-responsive beacuse of the huge CPU or I/O load and a mesage keeps popping up that there's no space left.

I can download but can't install even after deleting almost all my games, as the phone runs out of space during install.
I'll have to try again after I finish and delete Assasin's Creed. And if that doesn't help, I'll have to finish Angry Birds. And then if that's not eough, I'm out of games to delete!
However, I didn't try deleting offline maps yet...

4.7gb of free space to get this bad boy installed! & then it takes up 878mb, it is going to be difficult for me to get this rolling on my 820 with roughly 500 mb of free space...
@Paul, Thank you for including the disk spcace it consumes, if you would also include the space required to install it OTA, it'd really help, Thanks!
any idea how much disk space it holds after it is installed?

I have 2.72GB free storage but it keeps telling me that i need to free up space in my phone. what the heck is that? oh count me in this dilemma. perhaps the app needs a temporary storage of 5GB so that it can install.

Thats mostly email and other information. On my previous phone i had synced everything and was quickly losing storage space. When limiting it to 2 weeks back, i got back a lot of space. So perhaps tone that down a little?

How many emails do you recive? That must be insane..... It's like 6,500,000 Pages of text ;) Poor you
Most of the lost storage does not come from Email. The real ammount of storage get lost because of maps, ie, streaming, temp files from installtions and other apps. I guess sometimes the temp direction is not trashed.

For who? You maybe, but for others maybe not. I'm not saying that it's bad to be content with 16 or less, I'm just saying it's not always what everyone is content with. I still say buy as much as you can afford. It's always there to use if you need it.

Guys try app "Shrink storage". I had 10gb in other now its down to 4gb, didnt work for the first time but after 5-6 times I've got all that space back, didnt even have to restart my phone like it says in the app, just kept loading stuff in and cleaned it after couple of min.

So someone will hack a phone to run it, just to prove they can, and probably torch everything else on the phone to prove a point...this is a game that can't even run on all WP8 devices due to hardware demands. This is like saying that i'm terribly upset my second gen ipod touch can't run iOS6 or any apps only supported on newer versions of iOS, terrible fragmentation there too. I mean, what's a ram anyway? I can't see fitting goats into a tiny thing like a phone...(sarcasm intended).

More demanding apps will be WP8 only, to push the hardware we have now, we will have to live with that fact. I can see having stuff that doesn't rely on the hardware or specific 8 api's staying compatible with both and that will be a good thing, but 7.8 won't be supported forever. I'm not going to ask this get dumbed down to run on my focus anymore than it'd run on my friends old 6.5 device.

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Cannot find on the store search, and US store must be the first one to provide this? I am in Florida, so should be the first time zone in the states to provide this app...How could it shows that my phone is not available for my region or I need to update my phone (Lumia 920)?

I've just set my phone location to United States (it was the Netherlands and i also got that message). After rebooting to apply it, i can now download it. So changing it in the language & region settings would work to download it.

So I managed to download and play it. Queued up the download right after this article went live. Figured it's worth a dollar but I can't buy it. Suddenly I get this not available error (L920). Go figre.

Great news, would be interested to see what you all think. Mixed emotions, I'm still on 7.8 but as a game that technically wouldnt run on my 900, it's good to see something out there that actually makes me want to upgrade : )

This is how dysfunctional Microsoft corporate is right now. Gameloft brings this quality of racing game to Windows Phone. Meanwhile Microsoft Studios with its best-selling Forza series never got out of park. Heck, they never even put the keys in the ignition.

Microsoft Games Studios are made up of idiots. Halo, Forza, these are the type of first party franchise that could make Windows Phone a series portable gamig platform. Yet, they prefer to code games for iOS!
Ballmer, please sort of MGS!

Even so, with the deafening silence from MS on the issue, at this stage I'll take WPC acknowledging its a problem they are aware if from their readers and forcing MS to respond to a press query, even if the response is 'no comment'.

I think this is one of them. Definitly has to be one of them, from the picures the graphics look amazing. Finally a game worth playing for how it looks and feels. However it takes ages for me to download the game. Almost 30 mins and it is at 5%. What the heck?

I am stuck with the "other storage" problem too. This is really discouraging. I have almost 5GBs of my 16GBs in "other". There needs to be a quick fix for this. I am not willing to factory reset my phone every few months to clear it out.

That is not cool. I had14gb for it to fill, having it run for a few hours. Did you restart your phone after the app stopped or finished and then hit the clear button in the app? The second time I ran it I gained about 300 mb but it was not fully done. gl and don't give up.

I tried again and got it so you should be able to get it now, maybe too many people were trying to get it all at once. With a price like that I can imagine a server or two went down as a result of the want for a sweet game like this

It is allowing me to download now, even though I have the same 3 GB free as I had yesterday. Taking a while to download though. Almost a GB worth of dowload. I remember when the entire game of Deus Ex could be fit into a single CD. Mobile gaming has come a long frickin way :)

I didn't free up space because my 8X had it still, I'm still in the honeymoon phase, I know my Radar wouldn't handle it, but it looks and plays great. Was thinking I may need to get rid of some music and the movie I have saved on here but checked my memory and still had almost 8.5 GB left not sure if I can make much more room without getting rid of stuff I use daily. I think they did a great job with this game, graphics, sound and play all work very well!!

Looks great and runs well on my HTC 8X. Bummer about the fragmentation of Windows Phone 8, this early on! I was afraid of that when Nokia demanded Tango last year, and now its beginning again for WP8 512MB phones... Le sigh. I guess it can't be helped.

I think i have a work around for those who are experiencing storage issues with this app although i can't say if it works because i am still downloading the game as we speak.
1. Do not download this game using the Store. instead, just follow the link provided in this article using your desktop browser.
2. you will be taken to the Windows Store page for Asphalt 7.
3. Click Buy or Try and you will be required to sign in (if you haven't already) and then you will be taken to the confirmation page. Just click Buy or Get Trial and this app will be automatically downloaded to your phone.
4. If you are outside the US you will see this message below the App icon "You can't get apps in this region. You can check the Windows Phone Store in your home region to see if the app is available there." just click Check my Windows Phone Store and you will be taken to the local Store.

I don't know if your payment information should match your region because when my phone was set to US, i can't download the app. But when i set it to Philippines, open the app page via the local store (windowsphone.com/en-ph/store) i was able to download the app via the steps above. And now i am about 5% approx downloading.

how to reclaim the free space that we created to install it like this?
the others space I had was about 1.93 gb, now it has bloated to 3.55 gb & my free space is 162 mb, the shrink storage is not reclaiming about 1gb of space which I had cleared after deleting lots of trials & what not!
I am downloading the xap file to install from memory card but i will need the free space that I had created.
Microsoft, this is a real mess, the others space management & everything else.... on a 8 gb internal memory device, 2gb goes into the OS, 2 into the others, I am starting to think it was only chance that others were able to free 4.7 gb of disk space to initiate installation, fix it!